Rick Dugdale

Rick Dugdale is the President and CEO of Enderby Entertainment, a film finance and production company founded in 2006 by Dugdale and his filmmaking partner, Daniel Petrie, Jr. Dugdale oversees all aspects of Enderby Entertainment’s business, finance and production and spearheads the company’s relationships with its worldwide community of financial partners.

Dugdale has just completed post-production on Enderby’s most ambitious project to date: The Intrigo Anthology - three films shot back to back, based upon a series of European best-sellers by the immensely popular Swedish author Håkan Nesser. The three stand-alone thrillers, adapted by Daniel Alfredson & Ditta Bongenhielm are individual stories interconnected by the ‘Café Intrigo,’ which gives the three films their anthological title. Daniel Alfredson directed each of the films with Pawel Edelman as Director of Photography. The first film in the anthology, Intrigo: Death of an Author, stars Sir Ben Kinglsey and Benno Fürmann and will be released worldwide in the fall of 2018. This will be followed just a few months later in early 2019 by the release of Intrigo: Samaria, starring Andy Buchan, Phoebe Fox and Jeff Fahey. Finally, just a few months after that, Intrigo: Dear Agnes will be released in mid 2019, starring Carla Juri and Gemma Chan. An example of independent filmmaking at its most daring, this ground-breaking anthology was greenlit, financed and cast as one package and will be distributed in various territories worldwide by Fox International and Miramax. Dugdale also served as producer on the upcoming thriller, NOMIS, starring Henry Cavill, Sir Ben Kingsley, Alexandra D’Dadario and Stanley Tucci.

Dugdale’s career started in his native British Columbia, where he gained extensive experience in physical production, working at all budget levels in feature film, television commercials and music videos. During this period, he was responsible for negotiating with local and provincial governments some of the most complex and extensive location filming agreements to date. In the early 2000s, Dugdale also gained experience in public sector financing and investor relations while working in oil, gas and uranium markets.

In 2003, Dugdale joined Daniel Petrie, Jr. & Company as Vice President, Production before becoming a full partner in the company in 2004. In the motion picture industry, the first decade of the 21st Century saw an acceleration in the growth of independent productions to fill the vacuum left by the major studios, who each year became increasingly focused on making fewer and bigger-budgeted so-called “tent-pole” movies, a trend that continues to this day. At the same time, the transition from celluloid to digital image capture made some aspects of filmmaking radically less expensive, lowering the medium’s costs of entry; this at a time when, paradoxically, the costs of making studio-style tent-pole movies continued their seemingly limitless escalation. On the distribution side, time-honored practices of releasing those tent-pole movies were joined by release patterns that increasingly allowed more independent films to find audiences. Observing that many independent films seemed to be made for no better reason than that the resources were available, Dugdale and Petrie believed that a production company that put the emphasis back on story, on the creative side, and on transparency, on the financial side, could thrive. This insight led them to found Enderby Entertainment.

Prior to the Intrigo trilogy, Dugdale produced the psychological thriller An Ordinary Man in collaboration with actor/producer Sir Ben Kingsley and was written and directed by Brad Silberling. As Enderby’s CEO, Dugdale also greenlit and financed the film, which features outstanding performances by Kingsley and Hera Hilmar. Dugdale also arranged for its international distribution by Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment, marking Enderby’s second collaboration with Electric. An Ordinary Man had its U.S. premiere at the 24th annual Austin Film Festival in October of 2017 and was released theatrically by Saban Films in April 2018.

Before this, Dugdale produced and financed the thriller Blackway, the first film collaboration involving Alfredson, Enderby Entertainment and world-wide distributor Electric Entertainment. The film featured a remarkable cast headed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, Julia Stiles, Alexander Ludwig, Hal Holbrook and with Ray Liotta in the title role. Directed by Daniel Alfredson, Blackway was adapted for the screen by Joseph Gangemi & Gregory Jacobs and based upon the novel Go with Me by Castle Freeman, Jr. The film was feted with a gala world premiere at the 72nd Venice Film Festival ahead of its 2016 release.

Previously for Enderby, Dugdale produced Dawn Patrol, starring Scott Eastwood, Jeff Fahey and Rita Wilson, and Rosemont, starring Grace Zabriskie, Brad Dourif and Michael Gross; both films were directed by Daniel Petrie, Jr. Dugdale also produced About Cherry starring Ashley Hinshaw, James Franco, Heather Graham and Dev Patel, co-written and directed by Stephen Elliott. For Tony-Seven Films, Enderby Entertainment’s genre film division, Dugdale served as executive producer on The Speak, Vile and 5 Souls and as producer on A Haunting at Silver Falls, No Tell Motel and Blood Shed. Dugdale also served as executive producer on Tony-Seven Films’ first sequel, the upcoming A Haunting at Silver Falls 2.

Dugdale is particularly proud of Enderby Entertainment’s involvement with the Austin Film Festival and Conference. In 2012, the Austin Film Festival announced the addition of a new “Enderby Entertainment Award” to the festival’s screenwriting competition. The new award is open to feature screenplays in all genres with an original concept and distinctive voice that can be independently produced with a budget under ten million dollars. Finalists and winners are selected by Dugdale and Petrie.

Dugdale is a proud member of the Producers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of Canada.